DLA011-0054 Transcription
28, PRINCES GARDENS, S.W.
July 3. 1912
Dear Mr Laszlo,
I am glad to say that the Committee of the Old Northandlers Club has asked me to write & say that it will be a great pleasure to all the Members if you will undertake a portrait oil sketch of our headmistress Miss Weisse [2097].[1]
Your note of June 6 said that you would do this for the school, for 100 guineas. This we would like very much & we thank you. Miss Weisse
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is delighted with the idea that you will sketch her, (the presentation was a surprise for her.)
She says she will try & come & see you anytime now that suits you, if you could give her other nature [?] times to choose from as she is so busy, but she is most anxious to see you & talk it over & also arrange about sitting. I cannot help feeling
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that it will be a pleasure to you as she is an absolutely delightful person. Of course please communicate with me if there is anything else apart from sitting to decide – framing etc.,–,
We are of course keeping your terms private.
Miss Weisses address is
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Northlands
Englefield Green
Surrey –
& will you kindly communicate with her –
With many thanks, & kind regards & I must tell you how pleased I am that it is you who is going to paint dear Miss Weisse
Yrs sincerely
RB. Kay- Shuttleworth
[1] In 1892, Sophie Weiss founded Northlands, an all-girls school at Englefield Green, with a strong emphasis on encouraging musical talent. For further biographical notes, see [2097]. The Honourable Rachel Beatrice Kay-Shuttleworth, this letter’s author, attended Northlands, although she was much more interested in needlework than the school’s music curriculum, believing that “education should be a matter of coordination of mind, hand and eye” (C. G. A. Williams, Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth: A Memoir, 1968, p. 4). Rachel was a life-long collector of textile and craft items as well as a maker, teacher, philanthropist and social activist, and would go on to found, in 1959, the Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth Textile Collections, a charity.